see dangerhart.com for an eyeful

8 Hours of Fishy Business

Sandblast tent. I’m in there with a pair of trout. The sandblast needed filled three times. It took about two hours, then two hours to spray it with BC20 for a black etching layer and heat it then scrub it all back.

E calls this my Dexter Room, when really I’m just seeing how much sand I can pack into the backs of my eyeballs.

After two hours of scrubbing back the etching layer of BC20, I can start in with heat and cupric nitrate; if you look closely you can see I have the torch in one hand and the spray gun in the other. I haven’t lit the dog on fire yet.

I thought I’d try hand application of ferric on the hoops for some contrast.

The blue of the first two single fish started in a bit, then dropped back to a dark green. I’m pretty convinced it is about getting the metal hot enough to fume the tincture without scorching it with the torch. This double monster is tough to get perfectly hot.

A bit of hand stippling.

Fussing about. The odd thing with patina is that you don’t know what the color is until the very last step of waxing it, which locks everything in. So I am working with potentials here.

Just look at those Iris back there, and ignore the art nerd.

Getting greener…

The ferric on the stones gives them a nice brown-gold tone.

Around and around we go, heating not to scorch and never quite getting hot enough for magic blue.

Flame to the tippy top.

The stream hoops have flower details on the inside and outside.

The hand stippling of ferric set the flowers to a rich gold on a chocolate background- or will be tomorrow when I grow a brain and go about making it all work.